Healing Emotions and Teeth Grinding with Yoga

One of the most common subconscious expressions of worry or anger is teeth grinding, the grinding or pressing together of the teeth, especially during sleep. Use Yoga to Heal Emotions and Teeth Grinding  By Stefanie Arend     In our busy world, where physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion are common complaints, yoga has never been more popular or more varied. In a society where many of us are overworked and overwhelmed by the daily stresses of our hyperactive environment – emails that haunt us even after working hours. We have performance pressure in the office and at school, tightly scheduled days for ourselves and our children – more people than ever before look to the ancient practice of yoga for health, happiness, and release of tension. But in many cases, mainstream yoga­—ashtanga, power, Iyengar, etc.—may not be the best remedy for what ails us. We all experience challenging emotions such as sadness, anger, uncertainty, and anxiety. From a holistic perspective, emotions are neither positive nor negative, even if we are inclined to evaluate them this way. They cannot be permanently suppressed or held under, and they persist until they are accepted. However, especially in Western culture, we tend to categorize these feelings as “bad” and quickly learn to repress them. Our troubles may, therefore, arise at a deep level but manifest physically at our body’s surface. One of the most common subconscious expressions of worry or anger is teeth grinding, the grinding or pressing together of the teeth, especially during sleep. Teeth grinding has a wide range of consequences, from disrupted sleep to tooth and jaw damage. Although the symptoms of teeth grinding can be addressed quickly with a mouth guard, for example, to discover the root causes of our ailments, we must listen carefully to what our body is…

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